Switch off dvd drive on Sony Vaio TX3 - Portable

This is a discussion on Switch off dvd drive on Sony Vaio TX3 - Portable ; Dear All,
I'm a newbie to Linux, just installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my Sony Vaio TX3
for programming shennanigans. I'm struggling to get the same battery
life out of it as I can under Windows. Under Windows it has an
...

Switch off dvd drive on Sony Vaio TX3

Dear All,

I'm a newbie to Linux, just installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my Sony Vaio TX3
for programming shennanigans. I'm struggling to get the same battery
life out of it as I can under Windows. Under Windows it has an
ultimate battery mode which gives me about 15 hours battery life with
the extended battery. I'm up to about 12 hours on linux with the
excellent laptop_mode enabled but know the machine will do better.
I've already reduced the colour depth on the monitor to 16 bit and set
the screen brightness to minimum. Under Windows you've also got the
option to switch off the dvd drive, modem and put the wifi into low
power mode. Does anybody know how to do this under Linux?